Hundreds of armed police stage terror drill on Thames tourist ship

More than 200 armed police have practised their response to a terrorist attack on a Thames “pleasure boat” in the first drill of its kind on London’s main river.

A sightseeing ship became the scene of a fierce mock gun battle between armed officers and police posing as terrorists shortly after 11am on Sunday.

The exercise, close to the London Docklands area, marks the first time the Metropolitan police have staged a live, waterborne exercise like this.

Armed officers boarded the ship in a hail of gunfire just over two hours after five officers posing as armed terrorists hijacked the vessel. At least one “body”, played by a volunteer, was thrown overboard.

The Met, the Port of London Authority, London Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), London ambulance service and London fire brigade took part in the exercise aimed at testing the effectiveness of emergency rescue tactics in lifelike conditions. The drill was designed to test every phase of the emergency response – from the moment an incident is reported to the conclusion of a rescue operation.

Commander BJ Harrington, head of the Met’s public order command, said the exercise was not in response to any specific intelligence about an impending marine attack. But he noted that recent terrorist incidents in the rest of Europe showed how would-be attackers have found varied ways to inflict harm.

He said: “It’s important to point out that the exercise has not been designed in response to any specific threat. There’s no information that we have that we’re preparing for.

“Of course, we have seen a number of incidents abroad in the past few years: Nice, Berlin – we have seen different methodologies developing, and, of course, the river runs right through London, so why wouldn’t we prepare for that.”

The exercise comes just two weeks after the Met’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, revealed that security services have thwarted 13 potential terrorist attacks in the UK in less than four years.

The official threat level for international terrorism in the UK has been at severe – meaning an attack is highly likely – for more than two years.

Harrington said the exercise was the first time all the involved agencies had come together to test their response to an attack and hoped it would act as a deterrent to any would-be assailants.

He said: “Most importantly, we give the people who are going to have to do this tricky and difficult and dangerous stuff the opportunity to have confidence that they can do it, and hopefully, above all, give confidence to people who live and work and visit London to say the police, the agencies, blue light agencies and other public service agencies, are in a really good position to protect them and keep them safe.”

In June 2015, Operation Strong Tower saw hundreds of officers respond to a simulated terror threat in a disused London tube station. This was just five days after a gunman killed 30 Britons on a beach in Tunisia.

On Sunday, Harrington praised the courage of service personnel who deal with terrorist situations. He said: “I just want to stress the bravery of the people involved in this. They go forward to face what is a deadly attack – they have no concern for their own lives. It fills me with confidence that these people are prepared to do this kind of thing.”